


CONVERSATIONAL LECTURE 

. ON 

: MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO, 


AMASA McCOY. 


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MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO: 


Conversational Lectore, 


DELIVERED IN THE LECTURE ROOM OF CROSBY’s OPERA HOUSE, 


TO THE 

International Ulining anb ^^Ijange Comjjang. 



AMASA McCOY. 


** In addition therefore to the natural and laudable love of individual 'wealth, this further motive 
is now addressed to our love of country: that the respectable place among the first-class powers, which 
it secured to the American Republic, to have suppressed so great a Rebellion, will be still further 
advanced in the eyes of all mankind, by developing the wealth of our gold and silver-bearing mines. 
And if treasures of silver and gold help to make friends for the Republic in times of peace, they are 
also those sinews which prepare to make it formidable to its enemies in times of war.” 



CHICAaO: 

PRINTED FOR THE COMPANY. 

1871. 








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Mines and Mining in Colorado. 


Aware of the close attention which Prof. Amasa McCoy, of this city, had 
given to the subject of mines for several years, and of his careful personal 
examination of the mining affairs of Colorado in his visit to the Rocky 
Mountains, last fall and winter, and attaching great importance to his testi¬ 
mony, the directors of the International Mining and Exchange Company, 
with a few leading citizens of Chicago, not members, endeavored to call him 
out by letter, in the form of a public lecture. Ascertaining that he declined 
to make this the subject of a public address, but that he would gladly serve 
this Company in a private and conversational way, the board of directors, 
with a few invited friends and capitalists, lately met for that purpose (Amos 
T. Hall, President of the Company, presiding) at the Professor’s Rooms, in 
Crosby’s Opera House. The remarks and views of Mr. McCoy, on this 
occasion, were deemed by the board to be of such great general interest and 
importance, that a resolution was unanimously passed requesting his per¬ 
mission to allow a report of them to be put in a printed form. Having 
obtained the speaker’s consent to this effect, it is with pleasure that the 
board present the following report of his address in their mining manual— 
regarding it as not only covering the general ground, but also as of solid 
value. 

Mr. President and Gtentlemen of the Board: 

One of the forms of objection I have to accepting an invitation to 
give a public lecture on the subject of my tour to the Becky Mount¬ 
ains, is this: that an address on such a subject, to a miscellaneous 
audience, must necessarily deal in vague generalities. When a 
speaker wishes to influence men to join the army, or to vote to sup¬ 
port those who are already there; or to help elect his candidate for the 
Presidency; or when in a literary address, he wishes to present motives 
for the cultivation of Knowledge or Literature or Art, he has a spe¬ 
cific object to aim at. But in remarks about a country, where many 
hearers meditate settling or investing; one in one way, and for one 
reason, and others in other ways, and for entirely different reasons; the 

















MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


4 


speaker must needs feel like one who is called upon to fire at random 
in a fiockj and yet is expected to hit each separate bird. It has there¬ 
fore been much more agreeable and satisfactory to me, to report upon 
Colorado, in a private, conversational, and entirely informal manner, 
to citizens who had specific objects in their inquiries. In this way I 
have answered the questions of several worthy young men who medi¬ 
tated joining the Chicago-Colorado Colony. In this manner I have 
communicated facts and opinions to some of those excellent friends of 
Science who have in charge the Ilichardson foundation for the School 
of Mines. And now in the same question-and-answer form, it affords 
me much pleasure to try and serve those capitalists and substantial 
business men who compose the International Mining and Exchange 
Company. 

Your objects being well-defined, namely: to buy silver-bearing and 
other mines, and to develop them, both for your own working, and for 
sale to others, I shall restrict myself to such a line of remark as I think 
will bear upon your purposes and plans. But you will please to keep 
in mind, that the very object of abandoning all platform formalities, 
of keeping my seat, and of reducing this interview, as near as may 
be, to pure conversation, is to have you intimate by questions, as I go 
along, what are the precise points that you, either as a body, or as 
individuals, are most desirous that I should throw light upon. And 
from the fact that four of your directors, including your President, 
have studied this country, and its mining operations, with great care, 
and three of you nearly as lately as I have; you will be able to define 
with great exactness what points it is that you wish me to correct or 
confirm your own views upon; or what to try and make more compre¬ 
hensible and satisfactory to the gentlemen, not stockholders, whom you 
have invited to listen with you to these remarks. 

In addition to the high intellectual and scientific interest which 
attaches to the formation of these mineral deposits in the earth, and 
to every process for excavating and utilizing them, and which had 
previously attracted no little share of my attention to what is said of 
them in the books and in mining publications, and to what I could 
gather from such scientists and practical miners as I had occasionally 
met—my inquiries now on the ground, and among working miners at 
the mines themselves, were the more diligent and searching, of course, 
because I was prompted by those practical and pecuniary motives at 
which you hint in your invitation, and which now actuate yourselves 


<1 








MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


5 


as an association of business men for business purposes. From the 
accident ot my having been invited, a year or more before I went, by 
the Miners’ and Mechanics’ Institute of Central City, to deliver a lit¬ 
erary lecture there, and which invitation was afterwards joined in by 
the Governor and other principal men of the territory; and having 
lectured accordingly, once in Denver, once in Nevada* City, twice in 
Georgetown, and three times in Central City; I was at once brought 
in contact with the best sources and circles of information in each of 
these places. Nor could anything exceed the cordiality and kind- 
heartedness with which every one aided me, in satisfying my curiosity, 
in regard to the scenic beauties, and the mineral riches, of the mount¬ 
ains of Colorado, as well as the stock-grazing and agricultural capabil¬ 
ities of its plains. To say nothing of trappers and hunters; pioneers 
and explorers; tourists, artists and editors; ranch-farmers, graziers 
and cattle-dealers; but to come to those experts in whom you are more 
particularly interested, I tested the patience over and over again, of 
those brave old spirits, the mountain and placer prospectors; of deep 
underground miners, who had worked tunnels and shafts and drifts in 
England, in Germany, in old Mexico, in California, and in Nevada; 
of ore-reducers and mill-men; and metallurgists and geologists. If I 
except the class of scholars and scientists proper, I never met so much 
well-informed and soundly-considered thought, in the same number of 
men, as I did in Colorado; and three busier months I never addressed 
to any other branch of study. And now the results both of these recent 
and my former inquiries, you are more than welcome to. 

FIRST GENERAL IMPRESSIONS. 

If I leave the regions of poetry and sentiment; the new revela¬ 
tions, so novel and strange to me, in the way of pure and exhilirating 
air; where the atmosphere is so dry and transparent, that game a mile 
off, looks as if it were but a hundred yards; where meat even under 
the summer sun, will only dry up, and never taint; where the soldiers 
who guard the railways, dwell without rheumatism, in “dug outs” in 
the earth, and horses live without harm in the cellars of stables; 
the magical blue of the skies, seeming to discover three stars 
where we see one; the mighty and interminable plains which look like 
a vast ocean of land asleep; the high-towering and innumerable mount¬ 
ains, where from one stupendous summit, we count in the same 









V 


6 MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


sweep of vision, some seventy others, and which appear as another 
ocean of rock, where every peak and clift' is a wave, and wliich is still 
a sea without its motion, but not now without all of its dizziness—if 
I leave these and the other thousand and one surprises and sensa¬ 
tions which flash upon the spirit, as if from a new heavens and a new 
earth; and come down to commerce and to business—I report that 
the first general impression which is left on my mind, after comparing 
the testimony of all available witnesses, both written and oral, is this: 
that Colorado, on the whole, and all things considered, is probably the 
richest silver, and perhaps the richest gold-mining country, in the 
world. Certain it is, that at the Exposition UniverseUe^ held in Paris, 
in 1867 , and where minerals from all countries were exhibited, 
the first Medal, for silver-bearing mines, was awarded to Colorado. 

NATIONAL IMPORTANCE OP OUR MINES. 

The importance of this award, as attesting the wealth of our mines, 
is worthy of a much more general gratulation than it has ever evoked. 
Indeed, our precious mineral deposits are hardly counted, as yet, 
among the sources of our national wealth. This can oidy be accounted 
for by our extreme yrtuth as a nation, the recentness of our mineral 
discoveries, the absurd manner in which our people at first attempted 
to handle them—exceeding the childishness of children with a new 
bawble or toy—and the consequent disasters and losses which fre- 
(juently succeeded these wildly-extravagant expectations. Some of 
these errors and follies, which have thus brought an ancient and 
greatly useful industry down even to popular conteni2)t, I shall take 
occasion in the course of my remarks to refer to. This much, how¬ 
ever, may be stated here, as an undeniable fact: that in all the older 
civilizations, much less valuable mines than ours, are held in far higher 
esteem. As far back into antiquity as written history runs, as far back 
as the Romans, the Greeks, and even the Egyptians—mining was fos¬ 
tered and pursued as a remunerative and honorable source of individ¬ 
ual and general wealth. AVhile with us it has come to be regarded as 
mere speculation, and of the wildest character at that, I read that 
among all these ancient peoples, mining was regarded as legitimate 
and as safe a business as merchandise or banking; and that it ranked 
next in usefulness to cattle-grazing and the venerable art of agriculture 














MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


itself. It argues a concurring sense of tlic permanent value of this 
branch of industry, in all the intermediate ages, that literature has 
charged itself with transmitting even to the present day, and that with 
great particularity, the mining processes under the Ptolemies. It is 
a matter of history also, that for centuries, and that from the working 
of their mines, the Saxon Kings were the richest monarchs in the 
world. In Saxony, at this day, in Baden, in Bavaria, in Prussia, in 
Austria, and in Ilussia, the mines are under the direct control of the 
Crown, and form one of the largest and surest sources of government 
revenue. 

While bur government has done nothing as yet for scientific knowl¬ 
edge in these arts, the governments of Europe have established well- 
endowed schools of mining, which are exclusively devoted to the 
sciences and the arts connected with this industry; and which schools 
take rank with the other great university departments of law, medicine 
and divinity. Such government schools of mines exist at Liege, at 
St. Etienne, at Prizibram, at Leoben, and at St. Petersburg, in Ilussia. 
A Iloyal Academy of Mines was recently established in Berlin; and 
a school patterned after these continental seminaries was established by 
the English government, in London, in 1851. The Hungarian 
government established such a school at Schenmitz, as far back as 17(id. 
No one who has informed himself of the scholastic institutions of 
Europe, is ignorant of the eminent standing of the Iloyal Saxon Mining 
School, at Freiburg, and which has been supported by the Saxon 
government for a century, and is situated among mines of silver and 
lead, which that government has worked for six hundred years; nor 
of the famous academy at Clausthal, in the Hartz Mountains; nor 
what an honorable rank is everywhere assigned in all these countries 
to mining engineers, and counselors of mines, among the learned and 
liberal professions. None of the many institutions of literature, science, 
or art in France, outrank the celebrated Kcole (ic.s Mines Imperial of 
l^aris—and this notwithstanding France works only base metal mines, 
and has no mines of any great value of the precious ores. It has even 
been said, that the corps of Inghiienrs des Mines of France, includes 
a greater number of names made famous by brilliant scientifical 
achievements, than any other body of scientists in the world. 

For want of this very mining knowledge in America, arises this 
extraoi’dinary fact; that the country of all the earth which attaches 
least value to its mines, is that very country, which according to the 













8 


MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


vote of every other, possesses the richest mines in the world;—so rich, 
indeed, and so numerous, that if the science of these other countries, 
were applied to the mines of our own, I entertain no manner of doubt, 
that an investment erpial to the government revenues for a single year, 
could in ten years, and that without one additional dollar of taxation, 
be made to pay both the principal and interest of our whole national 
debt. The mining country where students of the physics have least 
opportunity to pursue the sciences which underlie this important 
industiy, is the country whose mines already yield a bullion product 
of eighty millions a year, and that with but little aid from science; and 
which for want of such science in that production, and through the 
sheer waste of ignorance, has lost during the past year alone, more 
millions than would endow ten schools of mines ten times over. 

The precious metals are in greater and still greater demand among 
us, not only for government uses in the way of coin, but for plate 
purposes and the arts, consequent upon the fast increasing numbers 
and wealth of our people. Nearly every American baby is now born 
with a silver spoon in his mouth; he eats his way up through boyhood 
and youth with a silver knife and fork; and even when as a soldier 
he goes forth to the wars, greatly to the astonishment of foreign vis¬ 
itors to our armies, he both fights in the field, and cooks eggs, when 
he can get them, in the camp, by the movements of a gold watch.* 


* “ Few readers, probably, will be prepared for the statement’that, even now, at this early 
period of our history, there is more solid silver plate owned in the United States than in any 
other country in the world. Such is, at least, the opinion of some of the largest dealers in 
the article, and notably that of the President of the (lorham Silver Manufacturing Company, 
who has traveled extensively in foreign lands for the sole purpose of studying the trade in 
silverware. Traveled readers will find it difiicnlt to agree with him; for, at the mention of the 
subject, there will flash'upon their memories the spacious side-boards of Euroi)e covered with 
clumsy and ponderous vessels of silver, under which a side-board of taste might very prop¬ 
erly ‘groan.’ 

“ There are houses in Europe which exhibit more than a hundred thousand ounces of silver 
plate to the awe-struck minds of men. * * * 'phe wealthiest country in Europe 

is Great Britain; but even there, if all the silver, jewels, watches and trinkets were divided 
equally among the people, each individual would have but four pouud.s’ worth! In France, 
where the great mass of the population never see gold or silver except in the form of money, 
the average is said to be something less than a quarter of this sum. In the United States 
there are no means of ascertaining the quantity of exi.sting precious objects, but it is the 
deliberate opinion of those who are most conversant with the subject, that we possess, and 
have in daily use, more silverware than any other peoi)le. There are few families among us 
so poor as not to have a few ounces of silver plate, and forlorn indeed must be the bride who 
does not receive, upon her wedding-day, some articles made of this beautiful metal. The lavish 
manner in which we are accustomed to give away silverware at our silver weddings is well 
known. There was a silver wedding some time ago in M issachusetts, at which about sixteen 
thousand ounces of silver were presented. * * * AVhen the golden wedding of 

Commodore Vanderbilt was celebrated a few years ago, there were more than a hundred 
articles of gold given to the venerable pair.”—“ Silver and Silver Plated Harper's 
Monthly, September, 1868. 














MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


9 


Now if we are to supply these necessities, and to indulge these lux¬ 
uries, and yet neglect our own mines, and depend upon the impor¬ 
tation of all this bullion from abroad, we are of all men both the 
most miserable and the most foolish, and national debt and bankruptcy 
are as inevitable as fate. Our jewelers and plate-manufictories are 
constantly melting up the metallic currency which the Government 
is coining; and one of the reasons of the high price of gold, of the 
delay in the return to specie payments, and all the consequent strin¬ 
gencies and disorders in finance and commerce, is an absolute defi¬ 
ciency in the supply of bullion. These evils will be aggravated, or 
mitigated, according as we neglect or develop our mines. But the 
demand for the precious metals for these various uses at home, is 
greatly exceeded by the necessities of our rapidly extending commerce 
abroad; especially since it is now penetrating those old close-com¬ 
munion populations in the East, like China, Japan and the Indies, 
and who take coin, and coin only, from all the rest of the world, but 
who never give a dollar of it back. Thus the demand for still greater 
and greater supplies of bullion, grows with our growth, and strength¬ 
ens with our power, as a nation. And thus we see that that is a very 
narrow view which regards silver and gold as mere personal conven¬ 
iences, or social luxuries—the truth being, that among every civilized 
and commercial people, they take rank rather among the national 
necessities. As our keels are now ploughing every sea under the 
whole heavens, and our merchants and sailors are visiting every port; 
so the call for our coin follows everywhere in the wake of our flag. In 
addition therefore to the natural and laudable love of individual wealth, 
this further motive is now addressed to our love of country: that the 
respectable place among the first-class powers, which it secured to the 
American Bepublic, to have suppressed so great a Bebellion, will be 
still further advanced in the eyes of all mankind, by developing the 
wealth of our gold and silver-bearing mines. iVnd if treasures of 
silver and gold help to make friends for the Republic in times of peace, 
they are also those sinews which prepare to make it formidable to its 
enemies in times of war.* 


* Prominent among the deep-laid machinations of those slavery zealots who songht the 
overthrow of Freedom and this National Union, in 1861, was the depletion of its Treasury,— 
as both the Southern conspirators, and their powerful ally, the Emperor of the French, 
l)lotted to possess themselves of its Pacific and Rocky Mountain mines. It was at this solemn 
and critical conjuncture, that the author of this address (through one of his public endeavors 
to defend the iminciples of the war) was honored with au acquaintanceship with Secretary 
(now Chief Justice) Chase; and who had just effected his first war-loan of one hundred and 


*2 














10 


MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


THE RICHARDSON COLLEGE OF MINES. 

And before I proceed any further, let me here say, gentlemen, that 
for every reason why I would influence public-spirited citizen like 
yourselves to join in developing our mines, I would interest them 
also in the College of Mining, Engineering and Architecture, which a 
veteran old miner has proposed to help endow in Chicago. Senator 
Stewart, of the Committee on Mines in the United States Senate is 
urging Congress to establish such a school of mines in Nevada. And 
there ought in fact to be an institution of this kind in California, in 
Utah, in Colorado, and in Montana, as well. At Ann Arbor, in 
Michigan, at one of the colleges in Pennsylvania, at Troy,* New Haven 

fifty million dollars. The revelations which Avere made by this eminent minister of 
finance, and who was then the riglit arm of the government, gave new and startling 
emphasis to all that the speaker had ever heard or read to the effect that “ money is the 
sinews of war ; ” and at this date also began his interest in our mines as a branch of national 
wealth and government policy. 

In contrast Avith the improvidence of the American Republic, the wise forecast of the 
republics of ancient times, has on each succeeding comparison, become only still more strik¬ 
ingly apparent. So far from neglecting the development of their OAvn mines, the popular 
governments of Rome and Greece, Avorked the mines of other countries, as sources both of 
civil and military revenue. I do not noAv recall Avhat Athenian statesman it was (perhaps 
Themistocles) Avho proposed that the products of the mines, Avhich had heretofore been 
divided among the citizens of that Republic, should thereafter be applied to the construction 
of a navy and naA'al armaments. Rome, as one of the sources of her pOAver as mistress of 
the Avorld, made an especial monopoly of the precious metal-bearing mines in all surrounding 
countries. On one Roman mine alone, there were tAventy-fiA’e thousand men employed. 
Hannibal is said to have taken halt a million dollars a year from one mine in Spain. Cato, 
from his accumulations in Spain, is said to have deposited that amount at one time in the Roman 
treasury ; and IlelA'etius, Avho was governor of only one of the ijrovinces of Spain, delivered 
at anotlier time nearly twice as much. “Plenty of money, the sinoAvs of AA'ar,” is an expres¬ 
sion Avhich is employed by the Roman patriot and orator Cicero, in one of his speeches against 
Cataline; and Avho because of his extraordinary services to the Republic, Avas called “the 
father of his country ” and “ second founder of Rome.” The Roman historian Tacitus, records 
his judgement Avith characteristic condensation, as folloAvs: “The repose of nations cannot 
be secure Avithout armies; armies cannot be maintained without pay; nor can pay be produced 
without taxes.” Plutarch, one of the most jihilosophical thinkers of Rome, refers approvingly 
to the Greek philosopher, Rion, Avheu he says: “He Avho first called money the sineAvs of 
the State, seems to have said this Avith especial reference to AA’ar.” The Greek historian, 
Thucydides (Avho Avas so Avise in thought and speech, that Demosthenes is said to have copied 
all his Avritings eight times over) affirms, that “accumulated Avealth is a far surer support of 
Avar than forced contributions from AinAvilling citizens ” And the same eminent and ven¬ 
erable authority elseAvhere declares, in a spirit of still broader philosophy, and for the 
enlightenment and refutation of all publicists aa’Iio think to make America poAverful through 
Aveakness, and to prepare us for another AAar, by advocating that “a national debt is a national 
blessing,” gives us the conclusion of the Avhole matter in the Aviser maxim Avhich follows: 
“For they have plenty of money, by means of AvhicliAA'ar and many other human enterprises 
are easily brought to an end.” 

* Knowledge is not only moral and physical, but eA-^en commercial power. To AA'hat extent 
Chicago might increase its commercial, sis Avell as other intercourse, Avith very distant peoples, 
by establishing great schools of instruction, to be presided over by eminent masters of the prac¬ 
tical sciences, will appear from the folloAving, Avhich Avas reported by the Chicago Evening Post, 
of the 28th July, 1871, under the head of “Japanese Students”:— * * * “The expe¬ 

dition steamed aAvay from Niphon fifty-nine strong. Twenty-five days hrought them Avithin 
the Golden Gate. Half still remain exploring California, but after fiA’^e days there, the party 
I met, pushed on east\A'ard. Most of these tAventy-nine are bound for Washington to consult 
with their minister there, at which of our scientific schools they can best prosecute their 














MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


11 


and Boston, and perhaps elsewhere, tliere are either single professor¬ 
ships, or several chairs in mining, which supply so many partial courses 
to so many infant classes. But in the whole country, there is really 
but one institution which is worthy to be called a school of mines, and 
that is the one in New York, where there are some seventeen professors. 

A college in St. Louis, I understand, has lately endowed a professor¬ 
ship of mining. Such feeble efforts as this, really hurt this great 
interest, more than they benefit it. Instead of commanding popular 
respect, and attracting students; they excite contempt, and repel them. 
For an institution of learning to pretend to teach all the geology, 
mineralogy, metallurgy, chemistry, and all the mathematics and 
mechanics, connected with the scientific and practical mining of all the 
base and precious metals, in the lectures of a single professor; and 
which, at the Royal Academy at Berlin, occupy twenty-four distinct 
courses of lectures; is as ridiculous as if they should hold out to teach 
all the ancient and modern languages with the jaw-bone of a jackass. 
Or as if President Hall, of the Burlington and Quincy, there, should 
offer to do all the carrying trade of the four Pacific railways, with the 
Lake View dummy; or with the fifth quarter of a mountain pack-jack. 
Chicago and St. Louis, which are to be the two great centres of supply 
and distribution to the Rocky Mountain towns and States, ought each 
to have a full and brilliant faculty in the mining sciences. And it 
especially becomes that commercial centre which is the greatest lumber 
market, the greatest beef, pork and grain market in the world, to have 
the largest and best refining and smelting works in the country, the 
best appointed and most liberally endowed school of instruction, and 
soon after this, the principal Government mint. And if the Chicago 
of the East has a fiiir system of instruction, for still stronger reasons, 
and among these because it is so much nearer to the great mineral 
deposits, Chicago itself should have a truly great and thoroughly 
national school of mines. 

The motives for establishing these schools of mines, as I have said, 
are the same with the motives for developing the mines themselves. 
Not only will they save in every economy, and add to every productive 
power, in all the processes of mining the base as well as the precious 
metals; but such scientific instructions and practices will throw light 

studies. They were already acquainted with those at Yale, Harvard, etc., but seemed to think 
most favorably of the institute at Troy. One of them told me, to my astonishment, that there 
were twenty Japanese, most of them friends of his, students there already. Six had decided 
to study in Berlin, four in Belgium, one or two in Russia, and the rest in the United States.” 











12 


MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


upon every otlier system of material improvement the country over. 
The schools and the mines together, will help to restore American 
commerce to American bottoms,* and to extend and multiply its ope¬ 
rations with every other country; and thus to bring to our markets 
at home, more products and purchasers from the ends of the earth. 
By redeeming the bonds, and filling the coffers of the Kepublic, they 
will add to the prowess and prest'ige of the Republic itself And, 
finally, by giving a powerful stimulus to philosophical research in all 
the exact and practical physics, they will so tend to heighten the 
light, and the joy, and the glory even of human life, by adding to the 
existing sum of human Knowledge. 


MINERAL ONLY ONE ELEMENT IN MINING 


It is possible (though I doubt it) that some still richer mines have 
since been discovered in Arizona, in New Mexico, and perhaps else¬ 
where, than even these in Colorado. But prove to me that a 
mine is much richer, in native worth, in these or other territories, or 
in Old Mexico, and I might still regard the mine in Colorado as the 
more profitable. The richness of the mineral is only one of several 
items which are to be taken into consideration. The ore of a mine 
may be exceedingly rich as to quality, and very abundant as to quan¬ 
tity, and yet the expense of production may be such, that every 
hundred dollars will cost one hundred and one. 

And this suggests a capital and very prevalent error on the subject 
of mining; and that is, to regard a mine as a mint, and the ore as 
coin. Whereas, the truth is that mining is a branch of manufac¬ 
tures, and the ore is only the raw material. Given, the raw material, 
and the next question is about the means and appliances for manu¬ 
facturing it ? What about fuel—as wood or coal; what about water, 
not only to sustain life, but to furnish power; what about the food- 
producing capacity of the surrounding country; the healthful ness of 
the climate; the cost of living; the price of labor; the means of re¬ 
duction; the facilities for transportation; the protection of govern¬ 
ment and law; and civilization generally ? 

Colorado is not more remarkably supplied with the crude native 
material, as gold, silver, copper, iron, zinc, lead, and all the other base 

* “ Wlioever commands the sea commands the trade of the world, and wlioever commands 
tlie trade of the world commands the riches of the w'orld, and, consequently, the world itself.” 
Sir Walter Raleigh. 


T 



















MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


13 


metals wliicli usually accompany precious ones, tlian it is with all the 
natural means of working these up to a state of use. 

I will now attempt to impart some information about this territory, 
as a mining country, under each of the heads I have named; and 
while my most moderate statements of fact, will sometimes seem to 
partake of the romantic when I speak of the country, that part of. 
my report which will probably surprise you most, will be what I have 
to say about the good character of the miners themselves. 

WATER. 

As the sides of these mountains are perpetually green with timber, 
so their peaks are eternally white with snow. This last being melted 
by an ever-genial sun, furnishes unfailing supplies both of water and 
water-power, on the slopes and in the gulches above, and wherever 
canals are dug, not only irrigate, but furnish water-power on the in¬ 
terminable plains below. The Colorado farmer turns water on and off 
his fields, as we do with faucets in a bath room. 

COAL. 

At the base of the mountains are deposits of coal which will sup¬ 
ply the mines and the mining mills for centuries. As soon as the 
narrow guage railroad is completed, which is to wind up the moun¬ 
tain-sides, a ton of coal will be furnished at the mines for three 
dollars; and which will be twice as cheap for fuel purposes as wood 
now is at five dollars a cord. The Superintendent of the Brown 
jVIining Company told me that this improvement would effect a saving 
to his company alone of from eight to ten thousand dollars a year. 

FOOD. 

So strong is the soil of the low-lands and bottoms, that they not 
only sustain, but they fatten cattle with their native grasses, without 
any other food, or any description of shelter, even in winter. As a 
stock-raising country, intervening between Texas and the great mar¬ 
kets of the East, Colorado is hardly inferior to Kansas. In vegeta¬ 
bles it almost rivals California. If I were to state the size of the 
potatoes, beets, onions and cabbages, it would bring discredit upon my 
whole report. All the small fruits are grown in abundance, and 
there is a high flavor in them, which probably, with much of this other 













14 MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


strength of the soil, comes from the mineral deposits of the mount¬ 
ains. I ate the mountain raspberry, preserved, and which I was told 
abounded even very high up; and the taste has gone among those 
rare and delicious memories which we never forget. 

While corn that is fair is grown in Colorado; it was not pretended 
that it equals that of Illinois, or Kansas or Missouri. The wheat 
however is wonderfully good; forty bushels to the acre are not con¬ 
sidered remarkable; and the crop has never been known to fail. The 
whiteness of the Colorado flour, left a finer impression on my mind, 
than even that of its silver; and I can easily imagine that its fields at 
harvest display a richer brown and yellow than even its gold. There 
may be sweeter bread than that which is made of this unbolted 
wheat; but it has never been my good fortune to eat it. It gives me 
a feeling of mountain-hunger even now to think of it. 


CLIMATE. 

You cannot understand how the climate can be so favorable to vege¬ 
tation, unless you efface your present impression, that in order to find 
mildness and warmth, you must go south; and until you set it down 
in your mind, that it answers equally well to go West. The air from 
the Pacific is so 'entirely different from that of the Atlantic, that it is 
a common remark everywhere within a thousand miles of the former, 
that if our good old ancestors had settled on the western coast of this 
continent, instead of the eastern. New England would never have 
been peopled at all. 

To the many who since my return have remarked very sympathiz- 
ingly to the effect that with all my enjoyments in the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains, I must have found it dreadfully cold, I have been enabled to 
say that, on the contrary, I found it much milder there, than we have 
it at the same time of year in Chicago. 

I will here relate two facts. 

When the Locating Committee of the Chicago-Colorado Colony 
left Chicago in January last, to select lands for the Colony in Colorado, 
the streets of Chicago were so blocked up with snow and ice, as to 
be impassible by the city railways. When they reached Denver, the 
farmers were ploughing. 

Again. On the 31st of March last, I met Mr. Sexton who sits 
before me, in Wabash Avenue, but did not at first recognize him. 
‘‘Why, Sexton, is this you; I did not know you, you look so much 













MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


15 


larger.” Upon this he said: “Why, it’s this overcoat. When you 
saw me in the mountains, I never wore an overcoat; but here in 
Chicago I have to wear it, because it’s so confoundedly cold.” 

Look at it. In November, December and in January, he wore 
only one coat on the mountains in Greorgetown; in Chicago, he had 
to wear two on the last day of March, on many days in April, and 
some days even in May. 

If a man can thus pass through the winter with only one coat in 
the mountains, you can begin to comprehend the fact, that cattle live 
with no shelter but their skins on the plains below. 

This greater mildness of climate, and greater genialness of soil, are 
the secrets of that mighty lode-stone of attraction which De Tocque- 
ville remarked upon as follows: “The gradual and continuous pro¬ 
gress of the European races towards the Kocky Mountains, has the 
solemnity of a providential event.” 

HEALTHFULNESS. 

As to the conduciveness of this climate to health, you have seen 
what Governor Bross has said of it frequently in the Chicago Tribune. 
You have observed that he has been attracted there at three dilferent 
times by the health-inspiring effect of the air, added to the supreme 
beauty of the scenery; and now he says he is going there again. Mr. 
George S. Bowen, also well known to you all, as an eminent merchant, 
who wastes his health and strength in his counting-room, as the 
scholar does in his study, told me on returning from only a ten days’ 
trip to Denver, that he felt perceptibly improved in the tone both of 
body and mind, and that even in that sliort time he had gained three 
pounds in weight. It is said somewhere in the classics, that the gods 
do not count those days which are given to the chase. It would seem 
to me that every day you spend in hunting, or fishing, or riding, or 
climbing, in Colorado, you live ten days in one, at the time, and 
probably have as many more days added at the other end of life. 

COLORADO SLEEP. 

But then it is not only that your days may be longer in the land, 
in the day-time proper; but you gather up your forces and vitalities 
so grandly at night, that you not only return thanks, like Sancho 









16 


MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


Panza, in tlie morning, for the original invention of sleep; but you 
sing several additional glorias and te deums for all these modern Colo¬ 
rado improvements. Think of it, ye who swelter on the banks of the 
sweet-smelling* Chicago—picture such a state of air and other sur¬ 
roundings in your imaginations if ye can—where the people “sleep 
o’ nights”—where they sleep Young’s “balmy sleep,” and “tired 
nature’s sweet restorer ”—where they sleep Shakespeare’s sleep, “chief 
nourisher in life’s feast,” and all that—where even in the dog-days, 
not the body only, but the brain, and the heart, and the spirit, as well, 
wax mighty in their strength; where no longer with themselves or 
with nature at war, sweetly blending the innocent slumbers of an 
infant, with the robust repose of a giant, they pass through every 
hour and every minute of the whole night, in total and supreme obliv¬ 
iousness, and without once hearing the voice of the mosquito in the 
land. No gasping behind window-bars, or under bed-canopies there. 
All the drapery that is needed to make a couch fit for royalty itself, is 
a good horse blanket under you, and a mackinaw over you; and you 
sleep a sleep which is never known to a head that wears a crown; you 
sleep the sleep of a just man made perfect. Nor are you to get the 
impression, from this, that there are any of those drowsy or yawning 
ingredients in the air, which you have found elsewhere, and which 
make men half asleep even when they are awake; nor yet again, such 
as make them sleep so fast and hard, as they say, that it tires them 
out, and they wake up. This is not Colorado air, or Colorado sleep, 
at all. While the Colorado man when he sleeps is so dead asleep, 
that he looks as if his spirit had gone to glory; yet the moment he 
awakes, he is so wide awake, that he looks as if he had just returned 
from the heaven of heavens, and intended to stay upon the earth for 
the rest of the day. 


* This phrase is left as it was originally uttered, to mark the rapid and great changes for 
good, which may be effected by mechanical science and commercial enterprise. The Chicago 
river, which when this interview was held, was to the last degree polhited and foul, has since 
been made comparatively clean, by the completion of the Illinois and Michigan canal. The 
course of the current has not only been changed, but it has been completely reversed; so that 
it now flows literally up stream. Whereas the river formerly flowed into Lake Michigan; 
Lake Michigan now flows into the river. And instead of being avoided, as insupportably 
oftensive, steamboats sail upon its waters on moonlight .pleasure excursions. So sudden and 
complete an abatement, of so vast a nuisance, Alls the minds of three hundred and forty thou¬ 
sand people, with equal wonder and delight. Nothing has ever wrought such precious and 
marvellous results for the health and comfort of Chicago, as the Illinois and Michigan canal, 
with the single exception of the Lake Michigan tunnel. And these noble achievements 
in the arts of construction, are samples of the brilliant triumphs, some of them 
productive perhaps of still more beniflcent results, which may be multiplied by generously 
endowing great schools of civil and mining engineering, and calling to their halls of 
instruction, savants who are eminent for scientific learning and inventive genius. 














MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


17 


THE AGRICULTURAL COLONIES. 

It is this sweetness and purity of the air, this genial mildness of the 
climate, and this wonderful strength and fertility of the soil, on the 
plains, conjoined to their confidence in the continued richness of the 
mines, and consequent markets, in the mountains, which attract so many 
farmers to settle and form colonies at their base. Nor are these settlers 
to he confounded with ordinary agricultural emigrants. The beauty 
of the country, the healthfulness of the climate, and the certainty that 
the increase in the price of their land, will soon secure them a life¬ 
long independence, unite to attract men from good positions elsewhere. 
Mr. Stanley Fowler, lately one of the Editors of the Chicago Railway 
Review; Mr. Holly, responsibly connected with the house of Butters 
& Co.; Mr. Coates, a responsible clerk in one of our wholesale Drug 
Stores, are three of those who are personally known to me, and with 
whom probably the first motive was health, whose personal excellen¬ 
cies would add moral value to any community of men. And to show 
the character of the Chicago Colony generally, when a gentleman 
lately said to the lady, who with her husband has charge of the Col¬ 
ony boarding house, “It must be very unpleasant for you. Madam, to 
be alone among so many men;” she said, “Not at all. Sir, I have been 
here now for several weeks with seventy-five men; and I have never 
yet heard a profane or objectionable word.” 

Note the significance of the success of the Greeley Colony. Where 
there was nothing but bare prairie land, fourteen months ago, there 
are now six hundred houses, giving shelter to fifteen hundred men, 
women and children. When I passed through Denver, on my way 
back, I bought the copy I now hold in my hand, of the Greeley Tri- 
—a weekly paper, which was printed only nine months after 
the first tent was pitched, bearing date January 4, 1871, and which 
yet contains, as you perceive, fourteen and a half columns of reading 
matter, and nine and a half columns of advertisements. Col. Pratt 
told me that he saw one of their town lots sell a few weeks ago, for 
nine hundred dollars, in cash; and since that, I have learned that the 
trustees are contracting for a thirty thousand dollar school-house. 

The application of these facts to your enterprise, you will perceive, 
gentlemen, is, that among the causes which conspire to attract such 
numbers, and to produce such rapid and wonderful results, on the 
plains, and which if they should give to Colorado in five years’ time 











18 


MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


a population of a million, would occasion me no surprise—wliat con¬ 
cerns your interests and calculations is, that chief among these causes, 
is the universal faith there is in the productiveness and permanence of 
the mines up in the mountains. And then again, whatever increases 
the quantity, and so lessens the price of the miner’s food, adds just so 
much to the productive value of the miner’s work. 

TRANSPORTATION. 

I will now speak of the facilities for bringing in supplies and carry¬ 
ing otf ores. The Union Pacific Idailroad runs from New York to 
San Francisco, within one hundred and fifty miles of the Georgetown 
mines. The Kansas Pacific runs to Denver, which is less than sixty 
miles from the mines. The Denver Pacific connects both the Union 
and the Kansas Pacific. From Denver the Colorado Central runs to 
Golden City, which is only about forty-five miles from the mines we 
speak of. These mines are therefore almost on the line of two great 
national railways. Besides which, a narrow-guage railway from the 
plains, themselves, to the very mouths of the mines, is in contempla¬ 
tion ; and there is now reason to believe that this road may be in ope¬ 
ration in less than eighteen months. Some persons expect it inside of 
a year. I sent a copy of the statistics of traffic, to Mr. Ward, the 
great iron merchant of Detroit, and although he said he could not 
invest in the enterprise himself, he expressed the conviction that if it 
were well built and properly managed, it would prove financially 
remunerative. 

The outlay of the Denver Pacific, that is the one hundred miles or 
so, which run north and south, and which connects the Union Pacific 
with the Kansas Pacific—the expenses of this connecting road for the 
year 1870, were, in round numbers, $168,000. The receipts of the 
road, during the same time, were, in round numbers, $304,000. In 
his last annual report. Governor Evans, the President of the Denver 
Pacific, advocates the early construction of the mountain railway from 
Denver to Central and Georgetown. And when a man of such energy, 
so much public spirit, and so accustomed to great enterprises, espe¬ 
cially in the way of railways, as Governor Evans is, speaks thus publicly 
and to this effect, you may rely upon it, that it infers that the cost has 
been counted, that the whole matter has been well considered, down to 
surveys, specifications and plans; and that it means, in short, that the 









MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


19 


% 


bell has been rung, wbicb announces the approaching engine; and 
thousands of miners feel already a joy in their hearts like that pro¬ 
duced by Mr. Hemans’ voice of Spring; 

I come, I come, ye have called me long; 

I come o’er the mountains with light and song! 

Even as it is to-day, however, you are to understand, that you can 
ride in Pullman’s Palace Cars to Denver City, and then fifteen miles 
further in the cars of the Colorado Central to Golden City; so that 
after seeing the bufi'alo, and the antelope, and the prairie dog, and the 
sun rise and set, and rise and set again, in beauty and splendor, on the 
plains, you cap the climax of your enjoyment by a ride of forty-five 
miles in coach, through the sublime glories of the mountains. 


NOTICEABLE TRAITS IN MINERS. 

The President. Will the professor please to tell the board about 
the price of potatoes? When I was in the mountains, they sold for 
ten cents a pound. 

Mr. McCoy. Yes; and even now they sell for about six cents. 
And this illustrates a very curious and interesting trait which I 
observed to be universal in our Western miner. He will have what 
he wants, and that entirely regardless of the expense. Of what he 
can buy, and does buy, the quality must be the very best. He never 
sees any coin less than a five-cent piece, and he utterly despises the 
day of small change. An old mining prospector was on the cars, on 
on his way back from a visit to St. Louis; and he carried back to the 
mountains a handful of coppers “to make the boys laugh,” as he said, 
“at the trash they use in the States.” At this point I was introduced 
to the speaker, who turned out to be an old and enthusiastic mount¬ 
aineer, trapper, hunter, prospector and editor—whom I had frequently 
heard of. Commodore Decatur, better known throughout the territory 
as “Old Sulphurets,” and who deserves to be mentioned here with 
honor, because of his sustained enthusiasm and abiding faith in the 
richness of the Colorado mines. He told me he had been taking- 
some mineral down to St. Louis, that he was “sick of the city,” and 
was “glad to get back to God’s own country.” That “never did any 
lover more rejoice to see his sweetheart, than he did to set his eyes on 
those mountains.” That “he would not live in St. Louis, if they 













20 


MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


were to give him ten of the best blocks in it.” “How about Chi¬ 
cago?” I inquired. “Chicago! I would not live there, if they were 
to give me the whole city.” 

I got better coffee in miners’ cabins, than I am accustomed to in 
our best eating houses and hotels in Chicago. I had no idea that I 
should see any such luxury as sugar; and yet I never was in a miner’s 
cabin, where they did not use the most expensive white sugar—what 
we call crushed or coffee sugar. Mr. Barton, of the Barton House, 
told me that he once ordered a quantity of ten cent cigars. Greatly 
to his surprise and chagrin, nobody would buy them. Nothing less 
than twenty or twenty-five cent cigars will sell. And so it is with 
everything the miner uses—boots, shoes, clothing and groceries. I 
heard of a number of cases where dealers in cities had sent to these 
mining-camps some second or third rate goods, in the way of ready¬ 
made clothing. In every instance they had to pay the cost of freight¬ 
age back to the cities, and not only did they have their labor for their 
pains, but they were well laughed at in the bargain. 

What the President refers to about potatoes, recalls a story I heard 
in regard to eggs. These, with butter, and poultry, to be fresh in the 
mountains, must come from the firms on the plains, or as they are 
called in the Pacific countries, “ranches.” In distinction from these 
articles from the ranches, are those, which of course are not so fresh, 
from our markets here, or as the territory-man phrases it, “from the 
States.” The story is, that a Colorado miner, at the Fifth Avenue 
Hotel in New York, ordered eggs for his breakfast, and afterward 
exclaimed aloud: “I want those eggs to be ranch eggs, do you 
understand? None of your darned States eggs for me!” 

THEIR INTELLIGENCE AND CHARACTER. 

The moral character of the men of a mining-camp, is intimately 
connected with the value of the mines. I do not personally know 
the miners of any other country; but nothing took me more by sur¬ 
prise than the superior intelligence, and the general good conduct, of 
the miners and other populations of Colorado. The prevailing idea 
is of a very large infusion of border-ruffians, rowdies, roughs, gam¬ 
blers, murderers, and thieves. I saw no more of these, in Colorado, 
than I did of Indians. My impression at the last was, that life and 
property are about twice as safe there, as they are in one of our great 












MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 21 


Eastern cities. Colorado appears to have been troubled, as all mining- 
camps are, with dangerous classes at first. Old pioneers spoke in very 
quiet and subdued tones of the “saving efficacy of hemp;” of tree- 
limbs as “a means of grace;” and how such and such a nest “ got reli¬ 
gion” over night; and others who in consequence of this “awakening” 
had “ left their country for their country’s good.” In short, their views 
seemed to be the very reverse of John Wilkes, when he said, that 
“ the very worst use to which you can put a man is to hang him.” 
At Central City, noticing that my chamber door was repeatedly left 
open, I entered a very mild remonstrance. I was told by the woman 
in charge that she would lock it, if I so insisted; but that it was 
wholly unnecessary. She had been in that hotel for eleven months, 
and never in all that time had heard of anything being missed. 
When I told this as something remarkable in Georgetown, the steward 
of the Barton House, said that he had been in that hotel for two 
years, and never knew anything to be wrongfully taken. There are 
eight towns in Colorado where weekly papers are printed. I have 
shown you the Greeley Tribune. Here is a copy of the Georgetown 
Miner, with its ten or eleven columns of* reading matter, and nine or 
ten columns of advertisements. Besides these weeklies, both Denver 
and Central City publish dailies, and which every day gave us yester¬ 
day’s dispatches from Paris. Some of these newspapers discuss the 
past, the present and the future, of the peculiar interests of Colorado, 
with remarkable ability. If there are any who still think that mining 
impoverishes a people; what will you do with facts like these: that 
in Denver, a place of perhaps seven thousand people, a town lot was 
lately sold there to a bank for twenty thousand dollars; and that this 
very bank has on deposit a million of dollars, mostly in small sums ? * 
If you say that Denver is not a mining town proper, but a city for 
shipment and supply, on the plains; then I report that on going up 
into the mountains, I found that the bank in Central City ( which 
with Black Hawk and Nevada contains about as many people as Den¬ 
ver) had a million and a half dollars on deposit. What is the guar¬ 
anty of security for life and property, where, in so small a community, 
there are so many bank-depositors? 

* In Denver, Colorado, 57 business edifices and 445 dwellings have been erected during 
the past year. By far the largest number of lots disposed of during that period have been 
sold to actual settlers or residents, who have built or design to build on them. In the same 
period the population has increased by about 2,000. and now numbers 8,600.—C/ncapo Tribune, 
August 5, 1871. 








MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


22 


MOUNTAIN MINING NOT DEMORALIZING. 

Let no one suppose that I mean to intimate that thousands and 
tens of thousands of men have gone to any spot upon the globe, and 
have not taken with them all the infirmities, passions and vices of 
men. Spirituous liquors and tobacco, for instance, prevail in these 
mining-towns in the Rocky Mountains, very much as they do in Chi¬ 
cago; and the effect of these stimulants and narcotics is always and 
everywhere evil, and only evil, and that continually. But that the 
occupations and processes of mining itself—I mean mountain mining 
—are not essentially demoralizing, I am now fully convinced. On 
the contrary, that there are influences in* mining—I mean mountain 
mining always—which are refining and elevating in their character; 
so that a bad man is made less bad, and a good man is made better. 
“Mountain men”—as the motto of West Virginia says—“Mountain 
men are always freemen;” and mountain miners are probably always 
thinking men. They must be so from the very nature of their em¬ 
ployments and surroundings. While earning their daily bread, these 
occupations at the same time furnish constant food for the mind; and 
that in contemplating the secrets and wonders of creation, in the 
purest and most enobling fields of science. If history, as Hume 
affirms, is the “mistress of wisdom”; here is a class of students who 
are forever pouring over the records of an antiquity so remote, that 
old father Heroditus himself becomes a man of yesterday who know- 
eth nothing. These rock-ribbed caverns, like the ancient groves, be¬ 
come temples of such serious and solemn thought, that the depravest 
man who frequents them, must needs look up sometimes through na¬ 
ture to nature’s Grod. Certain it is, that profane swearing and irrev¬ 
erence, so constant and habitual in our towns and cities, is noticeably 
less frequent among the mining men of the mountains; and the pre¬ 
vailing tone and staple of mountain conversation and demeanor, is not 
only self-respectful, manly and considerate, but even high-minded, 
generous and noble. 

PATRIOTISM OF THE MINERS. 

'Jffie Pike’s Peak gold-hunters of 1859, who are now the gold and 
silver miners of Colorado, like those who went out to California in 
1849, are not only successful seekers of those precious metals which 
are so great a necessity to commerce, to the government, to the nation. 








MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


23 


and the world; but no history of our country will he comprehensive 
or complete, which does not assign to them a respectable place, both 
among the pathfinders of Empire, and the founders of free and great 
commonwealths. Next to the men of 1776, and next to the men of 
1861, as it seems to me, they deserve well of the American Republic. 
In our late great struggle for Nationality and Freedom, when the 
heavens were darkened, when the earth was drenched in blood, and 
when it seemed as if the sacred temple of Liberty itself would be 
rent in twain—many of these pioneers and prospectors laid down the 
shovel and the pick, and took up the bayonet and the sword; to fight 
for that great National Union of Washington, which binds, not less 
the West with the East, than the South with the North. With such 
rude uniforms and accoutrements as they could lay their hands on, 
but considerably short at first of the regulation-standards, these mount¬ 
ain and miner braves, to whom hardship is sweet, and to whom 
danger is romance, went forth to battle both with the Southern rebels, 
and their Indian allies, as less hardy and masculine spirits go forth to 
a festival. Misunderstood and disparaged as they may be, where they 
are not known, it was enough that these men knew themselves, and 
knew where both their blood and their liberties came from. As at 
Concord and at Bunker’s Hill, in person, so now again in the spirit 
of these their descendants—• 

In their ragged regimentals, 

Stood the old Continentals, 

Yielding not. 

And bravely and well did these Union-loving and loyal-hearted emi¬ 
grants to the new far West, do their part towards this sublime result 
of the war: that though you take to yourself the wings of the morn¬ 
ing, and follow the sun in his course, from the rising of the same in 
the Atlantic ocean, to the going down thereof in the Pacific, you see 
in all this glorious flight, but one flag, over one country—one country, 
under one flag! And you feel a deeper and more abiding assurance 
in your heart, than you ever did before, that as it is now, so it ever 
shall be—not only forever one, but forever free! 

CLOSING PROOFS OF THEIR PROBITY AND KINDHEARTEDNESS. 

Director. Will the Professor please tell the meeting about his 
gold watch ? 












24 MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


Mr. McCoy. Oh, yes, this watch; thereby hangs a tale of some 
significance. Well, though it happened to me to have a very warm 
reception from the first, yet at the last they made it a little too hot 
for me. The night before I was to leave Georgetown on my return, 
I woke up about half-past one o’clock, to find the Barton House, in 
which I was stopping, in flames. After I saw that my trunk and 
valises were safe, and after ringing the neighboring church bell for a 
while, I observed that I had not saved my watch. It is not of very 
great value intrinsically, but having spoken by it several hundreds of 
hours, in ten or more States of the Union, in support of the war, I 
value it highly for its associations. “Of course,” I said, “I shall 
never hear of that watch again.” Remembering that two opera- 
glasses had been taken from this very room in fifteen months, it was 
to me simply amusing to hear mining-prospector Isaacs speak in all 
apparent sincerity as follows: “If the watch is burnt, of course that 
is the last of it, as you say; but if any of our mining-boys have taken 
it out of your room, you may rely upon it that as soon as it is known 
who it belongs to, it will be returned.” And this calm and refreshing 
trust in the goodness of human nature, turned out to be not mis¬ 
placed. Before the sun was up in the morning, to behold the ruins 
of the night, my faithful old time-piece during the war, safe and 
sound, still running at the rate of sixty seconds to the minute, was 
handed back to me by Marshal Wynionds. 

And this is the country (it makes me laugh at myself now to 
think of it) which before I visited it, I rubbed up my poor practice 
with the pistol a little, thinking I might have to use it. And this is 
the country, which before Mr. Leonard Calkins, of this city, visited— 
thinking it must almost as a matter of course be stolen from him—he 
actually exchanged his gold watch for a silver bne! 

In point of fact, gentlemen, it will help you to a much truer ap¬ 
prehension of the character of these mining populations, if instead of 
regarding them as heathens, and ourselves as Christians, you will 
please to change places, and regard them as the Christians, and our¬ 
selves as the heathens. 

Not only was my watch thus returned to me, but seeing that my 
long ride in the coach, so early of a January morning, would prob¬ 
ably make me chilly, one of these veteran prospectors, out of that 
genuine kindliness of spirit, which would bring a glow to your heart 
even in the Arctics, went back to his cabin, brought a blanket olf his 










MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


25 


own bed, and, against all my protests, persisted in placing it around 
my knees. 

You can now well believe, gentlemen, that in parting with so many ' 
objects of interest, and with which I seemed now to have become per¬ 
sonally acquainted; that in bidding adieu to those wonderfully-beauti- 
ful canons, and those majestic and eternally snow-capped peaks, I rode 
down to the plains, thinking more kindly and more favorably of poor 
human nature, than I did when I went up; and if I were to live a 
hundred years, I would still exclaim in my heart, as I did repeatedly 
on my return-ride that morning: Men and Mountains of Colorado^ 
Hail and Farewell! 


CLEAR CREEK COUNTY MINES. 

I have said, Mr. President and Gentlemen, that when the mines of 
the globe struggled for distinction at the Exposition at Paris, in 1867, 
the medal of honor, for the most productive silver-bearing mines 
in the world, was awarded to Colorado. I will now add, that at the 
Industrial Fair of Colorado itself, and which was held at Denver, in 
September, 1870, the territorial juries awarded the medal for the 
richest silver mines of Colorado, to Clear Creek County, where your 
properties are situated; and the medal for the richest of the richest, 
.as adjudged from numerous samples of the same ore, was awarded to 
one of the lodes which your tunnel will strike—the Snowdrift Lode. 
I saw these medals delivered myself by Commodore Decatur at a pub¬ 
lic meeting of miners in Georgetown. 


BROWN AND SHERMAN MOUNTAIN MINES. 

All of your properties at present are situated in Brown and Sher¬ 
man mountains; and it affords me pleasure to report that these are 
the mountains in whose mines I have the greatest confidence. I 
know these best, have studied them most, and would appraise them 
the highest. They contain, of all the mountains in that region of 
country, the greatest number of mines that are developed and proved. 
I never heard of a mine in either mountain which ever gave out; or 
which did not grow richer as it was worked down. In the Brown 


*4 











MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


2 () 


IMoiiiitaiii is tlie celebrated Terrible ]jode, wliicli a year ago, sold for 
five hundred thousand dollars in gold, in London. The last English 
mail brought the intelligence that this stock, which was lately sold at 
sixty per cent, premium, had now advanced to seventy per cent. The 
Brown Company’s property probably could not be bought for less 
than a million. Then there are the Mammoth, the Brown, the Coin, 
and the John J. Boe—all developed, and all proved to be exceedingly 
rich; and to grow richer as you go to a greater depth. I visited all 
of these several times, and give both the result of my own observa¬ 
tions, and their reputation according to the speech of men as it 
prevails around them. While the character of these mountains 
seemed to me to be better established, for the richness and continuity 
of their veins, so, they seemed to require less expense in the way of 
roads, to haul up provisions to the men, and to haul down ore to 
the mills—inasmuch as they are nearer, at once, to the level of the 
Creek, to an excellent wagon road which is already built, and to the 
principal reduction works, 

DEVELOPING MINES FOR SALE. 

In addition to working mines for the pi-ofits of mining proper, T 
perceive that your plan includes the great additional feature of buying 
mines for development and subsequent sale. IMy enquiries in Colo¬ 
rado, left the impression on my mind, that with considerable capital 
to begin with, this form of commerce, especially if coupled, as you 
propose, with enlightened continuous mining proper, could be made 
vastly profitable. While to persons who properly inform themselves, 
there need be no more risk in it, than there is in investing in real 
estate in Chicago. There is a bureau of mines in London, whose cap¬ 
ital is now; I dare not say how many millions, which so buys 
develops and sells mines all over the world. A wiser course for a 
company of moderate means, would undoubtedly be, to restrict them¬ 
selves to a range of mines, of proved certainty, like those of the 
Georgetown district. Much of my information on this branch of the 
subject is obtained from English capitalists, who were visiting our dif¬ 
ferent territories, and that in the depth of winter, examining and pur¬ 
chasing mines. And here is surely a noteworthy fact, that while in 
every other country, it is the settled policy, that its gold and silver- 
producing mines shall bo worked by the government, or its subjects; 









MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


with US, on the other hand, many of the best and richest mines in 
America, are noAV passing into the hands of the capitalists of other 
countries. * 

I have said that the Terrible mine in Brown Mountain was sold to 
a body of capitalists in London for five hundred thousand dollars in 
gold. And yet so little has this arrested attention in our own coun¬ 
try, that though this occurred over a year ago, the fact has never been 
mentioned, as far as I know, in any Chicago journal—wonderfully 
enterprising as they are in gathering and publishing every other form 
of news. The great fact that the Burleigh Tunnel has struck the 
Mendota, has not been printed here, much less any of the important 
theories which are established by it. And yet in four and twenty 
hours this event was made known by cable to several circles of mining 
capitalists in London; and men are now on the ocean, who ai’e charged 
with investments in consequence of those dispatches. 

Mr. Old, the agent of the Terrible Company, and other English 
miners, told me that if they bought the Mendota West for, say, a 
hundred thousand dollars, they would expect to sell it in London 
inside of twelve months for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 
This was before the Burleigh Tunnel struck it. Some German 
experts and scientists thought Mr. Old’s e.stimate and expectations 
very moderate, and they put their opinion in writing to the effect, that 
if twenty-five thousand dollars were expended in developing this mine, 
it would command a million of dollars. 

When I asked Mr.' Boberts, the principal owner of the IMendota 
East, what he regarded as the cash value of the Mendota West, he 
said he did not like to answer my question in that form; but he 
would make some calculations, based on the actual products of the 
mine, to show what amount of ore might be taken out of it. When 
I saw that his figures presented an aggregate of sixteen millions, in 
profits, and that even then he had only reached a depth of eight hun¬ 
dred feet, which in mining matters is considered oidy a good start in 
the world, T excused him from using up any more stationery on my 
account. 


* A short time a^o n, silver mine in Utah Avas bought for $1,100,000 in gold by London 
capitalists, and the bargain Wiis made, the title passed, and money paid within forty-eight 
hours.—iVew York Dispatch to Western Associated Press, August'I, 1871. 

[Special l)isi)atch to the Chicago Evening 7A«s<.] 

New York, Aug. 9.—The sale of another Utah silver mine is reported to day to a foreign 
company, for $800,000, the transaction having been closed by cable. 















28 


MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


I was reminded of a joke wliich was told to me in the mountains, 
of a certain miner, who (as the phrase is there) had “struck it rich 
on the lower tunnel,” and who was excusably elated by his great good 
fortune. Among other extravagances of speech and of deed which 
were related to me, was this: In laying in supplies in Chicago, he 
stepped into a bookstore, and asked “if they kept lead j^encils for 
sale?” “Do you want one pencil or a dozen?” “A dozen lead pen¬ 
cils ! Why, I want a gross, at least. I am a miner in Colorado, and 
I have struck it so rich, that it takes fourteen or fifteen pencils every 
day to do my figuring.” 


THE HERCULES AND LADY FRANKLIN LODES. 

Director. Will you have the kindness to state, sir, what you 
know personally of the Hercules Lode and the Lady Franklin? 

Mr. McCoy. Certainly, sir. At the request of a member of this 
board, and also of the owners, I examined both of these lodes with 
care, and reported my observations and opinions at the time in writing. 
I suppose these written statements are now in possession of this Com¬ 
pany. I took ore out of both of them and had it assayed. The 
cup in which the ore of the Lady Franklin lode was assayed, I brought 
with me as a curiosity, and I now hold it in my hand. The authentic 
certificate of assay, of both of these lodes, I sent to Chicago, with my 
written report made from notes taken on the property itself. A finer 
site than the Lady Franklin holds, for the purposes of a tunnel, I do 
not remember to have seen. On each end of the Hercules there is a 
shaft, said to be some twenty-five feet deep. This latter takes rank 
therefore among lodes that are proved and almost developed. It was 
ore from one of these shafts, and taken out by myself, that yielded, by 
fire assay, the great value of over $800, silver, to the ton of ore. 

Both of these mines are in Brown Mountain, in the midst of a 
whole family of mines, whose extraordinary richness are established 
beyond all cavil or doubt; and which invariably grow richer as you 
work them further down. A mining engineer of such high personal 
and professional standing, that no man in Colorado pretends to ques¬ 
tion his statement of a fact—I mean Bobert 0. Old, Esq.—states in 
writing, for instance, that the ore in the third level of the Terrible, is 

twice as’valuable as the ore'^in the first level. 

^ ^ 








MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


29 


I believe that it would not take very many thousands of dollars to 
so develop both of these lodes that they would each bring as much as 
the 'J^errible itself did—a mine which is of the same great family, in 
the same mountain, and which is perhaps not more than a thousand 
feet off. 

And while for the sake of turning your money over rapidly, and 
declaring dividends, you might choose to sell one of these mines, as 
soon as you had brought it to such a state of development, that it 
would bring half a million of dollars; yet if you choose to put in 
enough capital in the way of still further development, there is no 
reason why you should not sell them for a million, or, for that matter, 
for five millions. An English mining capitalist told me that he knew 
of a lead mine in England, and which certainly was not as profitable 
as the Hercules and Lady Franklin can be made, which could not be 
bought for five million dollars, in cash. 

MINES ON THE SUNNY SIDE. 

A Director. Does it not make some difference as to which side 
of Brown and Sherman Mountains these properties are situated? 

Mr. McCoy. Certainly; a good deal of difterence. On the shady 
side of mountains, even though it be not too cold to work, yet there 
is frequently melted snow enough to make a little ice; and which on 
such precipitous trails, greatly interferes with climbing by the miners, 
and packing provisions and ore by jacks. The shady side to me would 
make a difference equal to one-third of the whole value of the mine. 
Your properties are situated on the southern and sunny side, where 
all operations can be carried on without a day’s intermission, in winter 
as well as in summer. Photographs of these mountains I now hold 
in my hand, and you will see by the light on the pictures, that you 
can realize up at these properties, the lines in Goldsmith: 

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm ; 

Though clouds and darkness round its base are spread. 

Eternal sunshine settles on its head. 

DEPOSITED MINES AND FISSURE VEINS. 

Question. We have been explaining to some of our friends present, 
the difierence between mines which are deposits and mines which are 
fissure-veins. e would like the Professor to help make that distinc¬ 

tion clearer. 












30 MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


Mr. McCoy. I am glad you have reminded me to touch upon 
this point, for nothing in practical mining is of greater importance. 
As far as I could gather, it seemed to be the concurring voice, both 
of scientists and of practical miners, that the Brown and Sherman 
mountain mines, are genuine fissure-veins; as some of the AVhite 
Ifine mines are as certairdy mere deposits. While I regard a strong 
fissure-vein of the precious metals, and which is well-situated, one of 
the safest and most remunerative investments that can be made, I 
would not invest a dollar in a mere deposit. The deposit may be 
very rich, as long as it lasts, hut the trouble is, that it may not last 
long enough to enable you to take out of it even as much as you put 
in. A man of good judgment, who has informed himself of certain 
fundamental principles in geological science, who has ac({uainted him¬ 
self with the situation and character of the mountain, and who marks 
well the wall rock, the crevice formation, and the pay vein of the par¬ 
ticular mine, can determine what is a true fissure-vein, and what is a 
mere deposit, with about as much certainty as a chemist can decide 
by his tests, what is true coin of the realm, and what is counterfeit. 
When an experienced prospector strikes a deposit, as many did at 
White Pine, he immediately wants to sell out, or seeks to make money 
by organizing a company and selling stock. When he strikes a fis¬ 
sure-vein, he knows that he can make money enough by working the 
property itself. The experienced miner ranks deposits among the 
glorious uncertainties of the law; but fissure-veins he regards as cer¬ 
tain as taxes or even death itself. Deposits, like the surface roots of 
trees, spread out laterally; while fissure-veins, like the tap-root, strike 
down perpendicularly. Like Virgil’s description of rumour, the fis¬ 
sure-vein grows larger, as it goes further; but the deposit, like the 
lady’s waist in Prior, “ grows fine by degrees and beautifully less.” 
A fissure-vein gets broader and broader like a firkin of butter; but a 
deposit grows narrower and narrower, like a butter-firkin up¬ 
side down. All of this Company’s mines I believe to be clear and 
certain cases of true and well-defined fissure-veins; and if you were 
to put three shifts of men to work upon them to-morrow, and ore 
were to be taken from them every day, and every night, for a century, 
so far from being then exhausted, your children and your children’s 
children, down even to the third and fourth generation, would proba¬ 
bly see these properties even more remunerative than you will ever 
see them yourselves. 













MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


31 


TUNNELS IN MINING. 

I will now remark upon a feature in your plan, whicli in my judg¬ 
ment is one of commanding importance, and that is the tunnel. The 
Colfax Tunnel, which is one of your great properties, witli the water 
privilege and mill-site adjacent, are situated at a point at tlie base of the 
Sherman jMountain, and on one of the Clear Creek branches, near the 
Silver Plume mining-camp; where a little forest of evergreens above, 
and the white surges of the roaring waters below, with otber delight¬ 
ful features too numerous to name, have often enchanted me with 
their beauty, both under the morning and. the evening sun, and when 
the milder radiance of the moon threw over the scene a still more 
romantic spell. 

Poth of the mountains in which your mines are situated, are pecul¬ 
iarly adapted to tunnelling, because of their being so abrupt and pre¬ 
cipitous. You are to understand that whereas a shaft sinks down 
into a mine, from the crest of the mountain, a tunnel strikes into the 
mine through the mountain’s side. And that while a tunnel serves 
many of the purposes of the shaft, better than the shaft itself, it also 
accomplishes other purposes which the shaft does not serve at all. 
The tunnel greatly improves the means of ventilation—a very im¬ 
portant comsideration when you remember how much powder the 
miner uses, and sometimes giant powder at that. The tunnel drains 
off the water. How great an item this is in the expenses of working 
a mine, you will guess when I relate, that the foreman of one of the 
best mines in Colorado told me, that they sometimes spent eighteen' 
hours out of the twenty-four, in hoisting water. When, on the other 
hand, the tunnel reaches your shafts and drifts, sink a little gulley on 
each side of it, and all the water runs off itself—leaving you the full 
twenty-four hours every day to ship ore. It was to thus drain off the 
water at a mine in Hungary, that they constructed a tunnel six and a 
half miles long, known as Joseph the Second’s Tunnel, at an expense 
of some four liundred thousand dollars. All this expense was at first 
to draw off the water; though they afterwards enlarged the tunnel at 
a vast additional outlay, to also take out ore. 

While these experiences in Hungary, and in other mining coun¬ 
tries, have abundantly established, that the tunnel system is the most 
convenient, the most healthy, the most economical, and every way the 
most remunerative, even when a single mine is all there is in the 












MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


32 


mountain to be worked; yet the National Grovernment, anxious for its 
own coin and specie purposes, to encourage the speediest and largest 
development of the precious metal-bearing mines, holds out still more 
brilliant inducements to gore the sides of the mountains with tunnels. 

How the tunnel system helps both the government and the people 
to “march on without impediment” into the “bowels of the land,” will 
appear from this: that while the shaft, which is perpendicular, strikes 
only one of the veins, which are also perpendicular; the tunnel, on 
the other hand, being horizontal, strikes every vein in the mountain; 
it strikes them all at a great depth, and where because of this depth, 
the veins are both broader and richer. Where for instance, I meas¬ 
ured the Mendota West, in a shaft some fifty feet deep, the vein was 
some eighteen inches wide; but the Burleigh Tunnel, striking the vein 
at the depth of eight hundred feet, finds the vein widened to some thirty 
inches; while it is found that this greater width of vein contains still 
richer ore. So many, and so important, indeed, are the principles 
which have been established by Mr. Burleigh, in carrying through 
this bold, and now greatly-successful undertaking, and so vastly does 
it add to the value of all the mines in Colorado, that it Avould be but 
a cheap tribute from their owners, to commemorate his services by a 
statute of gold. 

There seems to be but one voice among those who are acquainted 
with mining elsewhere, that Colorado, from the almost perpendicular 
precipitousness of its mountains and rocks, is better adapted to tun¬ 
nelling than any other mining country in the world. Joseph the 
Second’s Tunnel, I have said, is six or seven miles long. The Sutro 
Tunnel, in Nevada, is to be five miles long. By a law of Congress, 
this tunnel is to ha ve two dollars on every ton of ore shipped through 
it from the Comstock lode. The Little Cottonwood Tunnel, in Utah, 
T judge must be of considerable length, since the company is incorpo¬ 
rated with a capital of ten million dollars. 

But the extreme eligibility, even for Colorado, of your Colfax Tun¬ 
nel site will appear, when I say that while the Marshall, in Leaven¬ 
worth Mountain, and the Burleigh Tunnel, only a few hundred feet 
from you, in Sherman Mountain, ran some nine hundred feet before 
they struck mineral; you will probably strike the King David lode 
in one hundred and fifty feet; and four lodes in four hundred feet. 
And so much are you favored at once by this shorter distance, by the 
softer character of the rock, by the greater cheapness of labor and all 













MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


33 


sorts of appliances, and by the knowledge gained by the experiences 
of your predecessors; that whereas i\lr. Burleigh expended many 
thousands of dollars before lie struck ore, you will probably strike 
very rich mineral before you have expended twenty-five hundred dol¬ 
lars. Not only will the owners of every mine you strike by your 
tunnel, be happy to pay you a remunerative commission for the privi¬ 
lege of shipping ore through your exit, but you are certain to thus 
discover new lodes, and which by right of such discovery, belong 
to the owners of the tunnel. The law on this subject, is this: that 
the tunnel takes two hundred and fifty feet, on each side of the tun¬ 
nel itself, of every lode not previously recorded; and of those lodes 
it strikes, which were previously recorded, it takes five hundred feet 
elsewhere, if any part of it can be found which is not legally claimed. 

The Marshall Tunnel, in running about a thousand feet into Leav¬ 
enworth Mountain, lias thus already discovered and appropriated five 
new lodes. 

AVhere for purposes of ventilation, or for any other purpose, shafts 
are requisite, experience proves, that they can be made more economi¬ 
cally, up from the tunnel, than they can be sunk down from the top 
of the mountain. 

I will illustrate the vast economy of tunnels over shafts, again, in 
this way. 

’J\) work by shaft alone, is as it* to get the money out of the First 
National Bank over the street there, you were to go through the roof 
of the bank edifice down into the vault. To work liy.tunnel, on the 
other hand, is as if all the twenty national banks of this city, were on 
the same street, and on the same side of the street, and you were to 
enter the vault of this first bank from State street, instead of from 
the roof, and so pass through the vaults of all, and empty all as you 
go along. 

MILLS AND MILLING. 

Question. What are the mill conveniences at (feorgetown, and 
what is the cost of Milling? 

Mr. McCoy. Aside from the Frown Company mill on Brown 
Mountain, there are the German Beduction Works, which were in 
the hands of Iluepeden & Co., when I was there, and which arc now 
worked by Palmer & Nichols; Collom’s Mill; Wilson & Cass’ Mill, 
now in the hands of Martino & Kurtz (though this is rather for 


*5 













34 


MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO, 


working gold ores) and Stew'art’s Mill, in lower Georgetown, and 
Professor Hill’s works at Black Hawk. 

The price prevailing when I was on the mountains, was thirty-five 
dollars a ton. Since I came away, the price has been reduced to 
twenty-five dollars. When Airey’s furnace is completed, Stewart 
expects to reduce still further; and still further again, when the 
mountain railway is completed. As to milling expenses, so in every 
other respect, the day of high prices is over; and you are taking to 
mining at that turn of the tide which leads on to fortune. 

Aside from these mills, which I have mentioned, which are full 
reduction and refinery works, there are mills which perform the par¬ 
tial process of concentrating ores. That is, they throw out all the 
gangue rock, and reduce the bulk to precious and base ores proper; 
and so effect a great saving, when you wish to send away to reduction- 
works elsewhere. So successful is the Washington Mill in thus con¬ 
centrating ores, that the Terrible Company is about to erect one of 
the same character, about a mile and a half above your mines; the 
Lebanon Company had begun such a mill less than a thousand feet 
below you; and Snyder’s mill, which immediately adjoins your prop¬ 
erties, must be now nearly completed. 

If the terms of the Georgetown mills do not suit you, you can 
send your ores to Professor Hill’s at Central City; to very good mills 
in San Francisco; to the admirable works now being constructed at 
Omaha; or to the Adams-Smith Smelting and Befinery works, on 
Jefferson streejb, in this city, where they are now working ore very 
profitably from Utah; or you can send, as some do, to Newark, New 
Jesey. Mr. Old, of the Terrible, sends all his first-class ores to Eng¬ 
land ; where he receives competing bids from some thirty different mills. 

English capital, I have reason to know, will soon erect fine reducing 
mills, at Golden City, or Denver.* Works on a large scale are in 
course of construction at St. Louis; and unless Chicago intends to let 
the vast trade of the mining towns of Colorado, Utah, Idaho and 
Montana, pass, without any effort at a division, to St. Louis, excellent 
and extensive reduction-establishments must soon be erected here. 

But wherever you send your ores, in no case would I advise this 
company to build reduction-works of their own. I notice with ap¬ 
probation and pleasure that your plan of organization does not provide 
for the erection of mills. 


* See letter in “ Supplementary ” matter from William Cope, Esq., of London. 











MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


35 


The President. We have talked that over among ourselves, 
and we not only do not provide for mills, but we are resolutely set 
against them; and we are glad to hear that the result of your obser¬ 
vations approves our policy on that branch of the subject. 

]Mr. ]McCoy. The result of my observations in this regard is, 
that of all the mistakes which mining companies have ever made, the 
one great fatal mistake is to go into the mill business. Ten millions 
are said to have been sent to Colorado alone from which no dividend 
has been received. I was curious to know what had become of all 
this money. I found that very little of it was spent on mines; and 
that nearly all of it was wasted on mills. Such crazy extravagancies, 
and all from want of true mining knowledge, again, were probably 
never before committed by sane men in the name of business. To 
adopt somebody’s expensive process for frying, roasting or stewing 
precious ores, which had never been tried; to appoint as agent, some 
rich director’s scape-grace of a son, who ought to have been tried, and 
sent to the penitentiary—this was the history, not of one company, 
but of dozens of companies. It is true (they seem to have said)—it 
is true that our inventor knows as little about practical milling, as the 
lunatic in Swift did about extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. It 
is "true that the dissipated youth we have a])pointed as our agent, 
knows as much about either milling or mining, as a mule does about 
mathematics. But only give them time enough, and money enough, 
and, like a pair of Darwin’s monkies, they will “ develop.” And 
what a development! The mills of the gods grind slowly; but 
these mills do not grind at all. Such agents have all gone to the 
bad: their works are still above ground, it is true; but they are as 
dead as so many Silurian fossils. To call them monuments of folly, 
does not do them justice. Solomon’s three-ply expression alone is 
adequate to the facts: “The foolishness of fools is folly.” I or 
neither the earth beneath, nor the waters under the earth, nor the 
bottomless pit itself, has such an insatiable maw as these reduction- 
works have opened wide to swallow the capital and earnings of mining 
companies. When I saw these huge edifices and their machinery, 
all along the creek at Central City, and Nevada City, and heard their 
history, I said these ravenous and all-devouring mill-concerns and 
their processes are to mining companies, in reality and in fact, what 
the wind-mills were to Don Quixote—so many monstrous and diabol¬ 
ical giants. 









36 MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


this I do not mean that [ would decide not to ultimately put 
up works for concentrating ores. Nor do F mean that smelting and 
refining processes, with those to wlioin this is a specialty, may not be 
made very profitable. On the contrary, T^rofessor Hill, at Central 
City, and others, make them immensely profitable. And certainly 
your Company has a mill-site and water-power, so ample and so admi¬ 
rably located, that you may sell it for a large sum. Wliat I do mean 
is, that it is better that the shoemaker stick to his last, and the mill- 
man to his mill, and the miner to his mine; and that it is an element 
of strength in this company, and it argues good judgment founded 
on the mistakes of other companies, that you have decided to set your 
faces like flint against investing any part of your capital or earnings 
in reduction-works. As the man replied who was asked, if he ever 
went a-cat-fishing? “No,” he answered: “when I go a-fishing, I go 
a-fishing; and when I go a-catting, I go a-catting; but I am not such 
a fool as to go a-cat-fishing.” 

NECESSITY OF CAPITAL. 

Next to a waste of capital on all sorts of machinery and processes 
in the way of mills, I found that another great cause of failure with 
companies, was employing too little capital in working their mines. 
And this suggests another common form of error which prevails in 
regard to mining, and of which I will now speak. It shows itself on 
every hand in this shape, and you yourselves have probably heard it 
many times. A man says, and at first sight it seems to be very plaus¬ 
ibly put—“If there is all this money in this mine, as your figures 
represent, why is it that you come to Chicago for money? Why do 
you not take the money out of the mine itself?” 

Preposterous as this way of putting it really is, it is still very com¬ 
mon, and the most amusing part of the performance is this, that the 
speaker does not seem at all conscious that he is uttering anything that 
is ridiculous or absurd. 

The sop] liism consists in the fact there is really no money proper in 
a mine at all. There is only the material out of which money is 
made. Silver and gold-bearing ores are indeed nearer to coin than 
leather or cotton or wool; but still it requires much handling, and 
many appliances, before it is available as money. There may be ten 
thousand acres of land, out of which tens of thousands of dollars 










MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


87 


might be made every year. And yet without money to buy, to 
plant, and sow, and reap, and market; the owner of all these broad 
and fertile acres may starve of hunger. 

This brings me to repeat, what I have said before, that mining, 
even in the ease of silver and gold, is a branch of manufactures; and 
without capital to work them, the owner of a hundred mines, might 
be in want of a breakfast. iVnd if it be true, as has been asserted, 
that most of the prospectors who went to California are still poor, this 
constitutes no argument whatever against the value or profitableness of 
mines; but it is otdy another striking proof that the raw material is 
not the only recpiisite to carry on any branch of manufactures. More¬ 
over, it is a fact notorious, that no class of monied men in America are 
so forward to invest in good mining properties, as the capitalists of Cal¬ 
ifornia. To purchase bullion, and to make advances to mill-men and 
miners wli) produce it, is a part of the regular and legitimate busi¬ 
ness of all corporate and ])rivate banking-houses on the Pacific coast; 
while the Bank of California itself, an institution of five millions of 
capital, has invested largely in the stock both of the Bullion Refinery 
of San Francisco, and the TInion Mill and Mining Company of 
Nevada. And finally in answer to the statement that most of the 
California gold-seekers still remain poor, note well the significance of 
the fact, that Captain Richardson, is an old California pioneer, who 
oot only achieved an ample fortune for himself, but such is his con¬ 
viction both of the permanent native wealth of our mines, and of 
their greater profitableness when they shall have the advantages of 
the skill and economy of mining science, that he offers two hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars of real estate in New York, if Chicago will 
furnish land and erect buildings, to found an institution after the pat¬ 
tern of the schools of mines in Europe. 

Mining not only requires capital, but the more capital there is 
invested the better. The larger the quantities of ore you handle, the 
greater will be your profits. I was witness to the fact, for instance, 
that when the mills in Georgetown wore charging the owners of small 
quantities of ore, thirty-five dollars a ton for reducing it, the Terrible 
Company, which had two hundred tons of ore, got it reduced for 
twenty-seven dollars a ton. 

In mining, as in every other business, the amount of capital you 
have in it, determines whether you are a huckster, a retailer or a 
wholesale man. You can do so small a business, for instance, as to 














MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


38 


carry your own ore to mill in a basket; or you can do so large a busi¬ 
ness, that you may charter a hundred railway cars, and send a 
thousand tons to Swansea. 

To illustrate this phase of the subject again. There are as good 
fish in the sea, you say, as ever were caught. And although Dr. 
Johnson says that “angling is a stick and a string, a worm at one end 
and a fool at the other;” yet there are many men who are foolish 
enough to eat fish, and without meaning any disrespect to that ven¬ 
erable moralist, I have to confess that I paid seventy cents for a 
breakfast of brook trout this very morning. Now, no fish would ever 
be caught at all, without this investment of capital. Furnish the 
man, the stick, the string, and the hook, and still there will be no fish. 
Spitting on the hook Avont catch fish. Swearing at them, old anglers 
declare, drives them aAvay. You must have bait. And without the 
bait of a few thousand dollars, to work it, a very rich mine might not 
be of as much worth to man as a single red herring. 

The more men, the more hooks, the more bait, you now perceive, 
the more you make by fishing. A single angler on our docks will 
sometimes spend half a day in catching enough perch to make him a 
dinner. Two or three men with a boat and nets will go out a mile or 
more, and catch lake trout and pickerel for the hotels. But instead 
of first fishing for minnows, to afterwards catch suckei’s, in mining, 
this Company, by employing a considerable amount of capital from 
the outset, will imitate rather the greater fishermen who go down to 
the sea in ships, and, as Dryden says, sit “upon a rock and bob for 
whale.” 


PRICE OF LABOR. 

Question. What is the price of labor at the Georgetown mines ? 

Mr. McCoy. Labor which used to be four and five dollars, was 
about three and a half Avhen I went there; but now is obtained in 
plenty at three dollars. This is for ordinary good miners. Deep 
underground men, of great experience, and capable of acting as fore¬ 
men, get four or five dollars. 


tramways. 

Questioyi. Will you please give us an idea of the working of 
what are called tramways. 










MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


39 


Mr. McCoy. Well imagine a telegraph wire to be as thick as an 
inch rope, and to run over uprights three times as high. Picture two 
of these running up and down from the shaft-house, on the top of the 
mountain, to the ore-house at the bottom. Imagine two iron kettles 
in the shape of a revolutionary cocked hat upside down, and capable 
of holding a ton of ore. One of these kettles, or cars, or cocked 
hats, you see coming down on one cable, full of ore; and the other 
old revolutionary, empty, you see on the other cable going up. Thus 
you have an idea of the tramway system, which is now being intro¬ 
duced as a more economical and quicker-moving substitute, for the 
plan of packing ores down a mountain by jacks, or hauling it in 
wagons by mules. I can well, believe the statement that a tramway, 
eighteen hundred feet long, at the Comstock lode, will reduce these 
expenses to twenty cents a ton. Both the Brown Company and the 
Terrible Company have them in most successful use. When I saw 
these aerial ore-cars careering at so great a height, so easily and so 
nearly naturally, they recalled a line in Macbeth, almost like the 
rocky mountain raven himself: 

The crow 

Makes wing to the rooky wood. 

COST OF TRAMWAYS. 

Question. What is the cost of these tramways? 

Mr. McCoy. I understood that the Brown Company tramway 
cost them about six or seven thousand dollars; but that the same 
could now probably be constructed for three thousand. And to make 
a remark of general application I think it might be said that all ma¬ 
chinery and appliances are gradually coming down, and probably would 
not cost more than half as much now, as they did when these George¬ 
town mines were first worked. 

FULL NECESSARY COSTS. 

Director. Will you please state what per ton, are those costs 
which are necessary, of producing silver bullion from the ore of these 
mines? 

Mr. McCoy. The only necessary costs, are the expense of mining 
proper (that is of extracting the ore out of your shaft or tunnel) of 
hauling to the reduction works, and of reducing. After you have 












MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


40 


fairly opened your mine, the expenses per ton decrease as you go 
down; because you handle more mineral, and less country rock. But 
even then they vary according to the character and size of the differ¬ 
ent veins. The following computation is founded on notes taken 
from those who have worked Sherman mountain mines near yours, 
and I think it more likely to be found several dollars too high, rather 


than one dollar too low: 

Mining, per ton, say.$16 00 

Hauling, per ton, from your tunnel, say. 2 50 

Milling, per ton, say. 25 00 

-$43 50 


The expense of shipping the ore off to reduction-works, in other 
States, or in distant countries, is entirely avoidable. Nor need you 
either pay for the milling, or loose the time in waiting for that process. 
As soon as you have excavated your ore, and hauled it to Stewart’s 
works, you can sell it, at high prices, and get your money, cash in 
hand. Ih’ofessor Hill’s works, at Black Hawk, less than twenty miles 
distant, will buy the ore, and pay you the cash, the moment it is 
delivered. Agents from mills abroad are beginning to buy ores at the 
mines. I saw a mining engineer receive a dispatch from London, 
commissioning him to buy one hundred thousand dollars worth of 
ore. The Smelting and Kefinery works in Chicago, luiy their ores, I 
understand, in Utah, then bring them here and work them on their 
own account. Indeed, good mills are being built so rapidly, and ores 
are in such sharp and increasing demand, both for domestic use and 
for foreign exchange—that it will probably soon come to this, that 
the miner will trouble himself neither with milling, nor with hauling 
to mill; but will sell his ores for cash on his dump-pile. 

A LADY STOCKHOLDER. 

You have asked me several questions; I would now like to ask 
you one. I am informed that Miss Nilsson has applied to Baron He 
Balm, one of your Directors, to secure for her some of this stock. 
Am I informed correctly? 

Baron De Balm. You are. 

Mr. JMcCoy. That being so, I am of the opinion that she will 
find this the most remunerative investment she ever made. And 















MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 41 


these luiiigled associations of business and of art, remind me that the 
Avife, either of Day or of Martin, of tlie great shoe blacking firm of 
1-iondon, is said to liaA^e boasted, that “her liusband ke])t a poet on 
purpose to writt' tlieii-.idveriisi'iiK'iits. iid. sineiMhe I iiteniatioii;(l 
•M I III I iti' ;i IM I 1‘, Xcliaiige ('o|iipaii\' liaVe lio\V eli<_:ag<*d ;• celebrated run- j 

tatrice of tlieir OAvn, and since, wherever any one is called miou lu ! 
tell a story, or to sing a song, the privilege is always accorded to him, , 
to call out his successor; I beg now to express the hojie that the least | 
of till speakers, will be followed by the SAveetest of all singers, and th:it 
Miss Nilsson Avill fliAmr this Company Avitli a song. And to make it 
the more gracious, let it be given on the stage of the Company’s OAvn 
properties. And to be in keeping with the sublime beauties, and the 
glorious inspirations of that scene, let it be (if the singer please) that 
famous Swiss mountain song of Freedom and of Glory, the Ranz des 
Vachcs. And since again, it is certain that this Company, by its tunnel 
Avill discover seA^'eral neAV lodes in Sherman IMountain, if it Avere Avithin 
my province (AAdiich it is not) I Avould throAV out this further hint: that 
the first three ludes so discovered be named, in order an<l succession, 
as fdloAVs: Prima Donna—(diristina—Nilssoii. ' 

CONCLUSION. I 

1 

J/r. Rresidcnt and Gentlemen: In comjiliance Avith your resolution, i 
and in ansAver to your inten-ogatories here, I have noAV touched upon 
such of my observations in Colorado, as I supposed Avould bear some- ! 

AAdiat upon the line of your interests and Avishes. And having noAV 
done so, it Avill afford me great gratification if any of these Avords of | 

mine shall conduce to the prosperity of so excellent and so jiromising | 

a company. Foi’, indeed, AAdien I consider the high character of your ! 
mines, the extreme favorableness of their locality, the exjierience and j 
good judgment shoAvn in the constitution, the by-laAvs, and the plans j 
of your organization, I regard this as the most Avisely-concocted min- ! 
ing scheme, of Avhich I haA'e any acquaintance; a company AAdiich, as it 
appears to me, combines every available element of strength, and steers 
clear of every aARiidable element of Aveakness; a company, finally, Avhich 
can noAV hardly fail of achieving brilliant successes, not only for them- j 
seh^es, personally, but for the great mining interests of the country; | 
and of acquiring a most honoralile fame in the commercial circles both 
of America and of Europe. 


:?(; 


















42 


MINES AND MINING IN COLORADO. 


And this success becomes doubly assured in my mind, when I reflect 
that to the great and inexhaustible riches of these mines themselves, 
Colorado adds every other collateral mining resource which is ever sup¬ 
plied by nature; and which, united, will soon attract to their vicinity 
all the other desirable advantages of a numerous population,—I mean, 
that giant strength and fertility of soil, Avhich is cajiable of producing, 
so abundantly and cheap, every necessary of life in the way of food; 
and of sustaining even to fatness by its spontaneous grass-crops the 
cattle on a thousand plains—that wonderful salubriousness of climate 
which breathes even into the invalid and consumptive the very breath 
of life itself^—and last, but not least, those beauties so sublime, and 
sublimities so august, in the way of mountain scenery;—and all which 
combined, promise soon to advance the Teri-itory of Colorado to a proud 
place, not only among the Empire States of this National Union, but 
among the great granaries and treasure-vaults of the world! 























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